Basic Trope: Everyone in a feudal setting uses gold coins, even the peasants.
- Straight: Farmer Bob earns 100 gold coins a year.
- Exaggerated: Farmer Bob bemoans that this year's harvest was terrible—he only made ONE chest of gold this year, and he normally makes three or four.
- Downplayed: Farmer Bob earns two or three dozen gold coins a year, which really only amounts to a couple gold pieces a month.
- Justified: Gold is much more common in this universe, equivalent to silver or copper.
- Inverted: Gold is worth far more than usual even for medieval settings - a single golden coin is enough to pay for the entire equipment of a knight and a plain gold crown is worth more than the castle of the king!
- Subverted:
- The golden coins turn out to be pyrite and are low denomination. Actual gold is worth far more.
- hard gold, (that is, 4 karat or less) is low denomination, soft gold (20 carat or more), on the other hand, is high denomination.
- Double Subverted: The peasants use brass currency that looks gold in color. Later, we see that the merchant class uses currency made of real gold. And then it turns out that the richest people use aluminum currency, because aluminum is even rarer and harder to refine.
- Parodied: Gold coins are used, but the smallest denominations are so tiny that they must be affixed to pieces of cardstock in order to manipulate them at all.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Only the wealthy use gold. Commoners use silver/copper, or they barter for things they need.
- Enforced: The author is writing a sequel to a series that has already established that gold coins are standard currency.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: The king wanted to show how prosperous and powerful his kingdom was, so he made the mint produce gold coins despite the rarity of gold elsewhere.
- Exploited: Someone melts down several gold coins, reforges them into a piece of jewelry, and then sells the jewelry for far more than the value of the original coins.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Wait. Isn't gold usually really rare? Then why are they paying their poorest peasants in gold?"
Back to Cheap Gold Coins.
